Jaguars' Luke McCown driven by work ethic, ready for any role

Sunday

Aug 15, 2010 at 10:59 PM

Tania Ganguli

Luke McCown learned from working with his two brothers in his father's sawmill at 7 a.m. during his summer breaks as a kid. Sometimes, when you'd rather be out at the lake playing with your friends, you instead have to wake up at dawn and build wood pallets, drive a forklift or stack lumber.

He learned sometimes work isn't exactly what you want it to be, but the effort leads you somewhere. It's a lesson he carries with him.

"I'll do whatever I'm asked to do to help this football team win a game," McCown said. "If that's being a starter, so be it. If that's playing the role of the second guy, I'll do it. If they need me to go hold, whatever they need me to do to help this team win, I'll do it."

Photos: 2010 Jaguars Training Camp Afternoon Session

The Jaguars' second-string quarterback has started in just seven games during his six seasons in the NFL. McCown is a career backup who was traded from Tampa Bay to the Jaguars last season. After a productive game Friday night in Philadelphia, where McCown threw three touchdowns in almost two quarters of play, he gave himself the opportunity to be more for the Jaguars' offense.

"You have to go into a practice, a workout session, a game with the mentality where you say, 'I'm working towards a goal to be a starter,' " McCown said. "That's only fair to the rest of your teammates, because inevitably at some point in the season, somebody is going to twist an ankle or sprain a toe and you're going to be asked to play a role."

Though a bit premature, rumblings of a quarterback controversy in Jacksonville surfaced Friday. They came despite offseason workouts and training camp confirming quarterback David Garrard's position as the starter.

Friday night, with Garrard protected by two backup tackles and the team limiting Pro Bowl running back Maurice Jones-Drew's carries, the starting offense didn't score. They managed just one first down in their three series, but could have had more were it not for some key dropped passes.

Then, McCown entered the game against the Eagles' backups and on his first series threw a 73-yard touchdown pass to Troy Williamson. He also had touchdown passes of 30 yards and 55 yards to John Matthews and Tiquan Underwood. He completed 11 of 15 passes and had a quarterback rating of 154.9.

McCown kept his performance in perspective.

"Nobody's gonna be named the starter off one preseason game," McCown said. "It's just, you want to get better."

Still, the second-guessing of Garrard began, as it has throughout Garrard's career.

"It's just how it is," Garrard said. "Especially when Luke has an amazing game like he did. ... You're going to have rumbles."

Garrard himself was impressed and reached out to McCown to compliment his performance. He's helped teach McCown an offense vastly different from style he played with Tampa Bay for most of his career. Traded to the Jaguars last September, McCown didn't have time to acclimate himself to the offense and admittedly struggled to learn it.

He spent seemingly endless hours preparing this offseason, even back home in Texas. He'd watch film on his laptop and share his thoughts with his father, Pat.

They were a quarterback family, though Pat never played. Taught by their mother, Robin, to be leaders from the playground on up, Luke and his two older brothers were all quarterbacks.

"You'd think maybe because he was the third boy, following the other two boys that he might have been a little hesitant," Robin McCown said. "Not in Luke's case. It emboldened him a little bit. He thought, 'Well, I can do everything they can do.' "

By the time Luke got to high school, his quarterback brothers had paved the way for him at the position.

But in the summertime, the family business took precedence. Pat McCown put them to work at his sawmill.

He found something for them to do when they were as young as 10 years old.

It wasn't fun, and that was the point.

"Well that's what you have to learn: Everything's not fun," said Pat McCown, Luke's father. "To be a great quarterback, you get to have fun for a very minute part of the time. The other time it's hours and hours and hours spent looking at tape. Hours and hours of conditioning your body to stand 16 games. None of that's fun."

Neither is life as a perpetual backup. But Luke McCown approaches it like the necessary work toward the goal of starting. And though Garrard is still the Jaguars' starting quarterback, McCown's work has added pressure.

tania.ganguli@jacksonville.com,

(904) 359-4401

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